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by sunriseseance



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24397960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunriseseance/pseuds/sunriseseance
Summary: See, the thing is, Klaus recoils from touch like it hurt him. Like the kindness Dave sends his way has ripped a hole in his flesh before. Like he has nothing to gain. His response feels warm, on the surface, and kind, almost, but it lacks cordiality, it lacks warmth, like Klaus’s skin when Dave manages to touch it for long enough to get any physical sense.________________________________________________________________________Romance is hard when you're closed off and traumatized.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 22
Kudos: 159





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [hermitreunited](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermitreunited/gifts).



> Written for Anielle on ao3/hermitreunited on Tumblr a bit ago! Talk to her AND me! I'm sunriseseance

Jungle air feels hot and heavy in Dave’s lungs, but he hardly has any mind to care about it. Pressed against his body, or not against his body, but close enough to feel the warmth, sits or stands or lies a person so enigmatic that Dave feels like losing sleep is a low price compared to losing him. Klaus appeared out of nowhere, or a flash of blue light, or a long and grueling childhood full of pains that Dave didn’t begin to want to imagine. 

As with most things romantic, it started with a dance. A dance to call the spring, specifically, as the birds woke up and began to court each other. Dave watched Klaus with careful eyes befitting a bird obsessed with the idea of the color blue. Often, hey, Klaus felt like the color blue. Transient, fluid, cold, beautiful, hard to reach out and touch.

See, the thing is, Klaus recoils from touch like it hurt him. Like the kindness Dave sends his way has ripped a hole in his flesh before. Like he has nothing to gain. His response feels warm, on the surface, and kind, almost, but it lacks cordiality, it lacks warmth, like Klaus’s skin when Dave manages to touch it for long enough to get any physical sense. 

Klaus gets shot, see. It’s a graze on the shoulder, and it comes from protecting the fucking idiot Nielson from a bullet to the chest, but it is a shot. Klaus gets shot, and he seems barely to recognize it. 

Not like he recognizes the time they kissed, behind a bead-screen, or fucked behind a too-thin-door. He doesn’t seem to appreciate a bullet wound as a bullet wound, and Dave finds himself wanting to scream. The bandages bleed through once, and then twice, and then Klaus kisses him and they do some heroin which stops the bleeding and starts the nodding in and out of consciousness that Dave cannot argue with.

Except, he can. Except, he will. Klaus talks to people that don’t exist, and he recoils from distant touches that Dave cannot see, but he doesn’t give a shit about the actual bullet wound festering in his shoulder. 

He doesn’t complain about it. Dave watches him for a week, between night watch kisses and daytime strolls. Klaus grasps at it, occasionally, when he thinks he’s unmonitored, or else otherwise uncared for. Claws at the dirty old bandages, at the rough flesh healing underneath. Dave wishes he was a medic so that he could help. 

“That looks pretty nasty” he says, positioning his finger just past the border of the bandage on Klaus’s shoulder.

“I’ve had worse” Klaus says, continuing to fill in a drawing of the ace of spades that Montenegro pulled at lunch. 

“I can’t imagine how” Dave says, in spite of himself. He shifts his fingers down Klaus’s arm, hoping the firm, warm touch might help alleviate some bit of whatever chills Klaus to his core. 

“You don’t wanna, baby, trust me.” The lights flicker around them, and then go off entirely. Suddenly, Dave is left with the sensation of being alone with Klaus. Totally alone. 

“I do. I mean, I don’t, but I see the way you act.”

“You see that I’m crazy?” Klaus stiffens, pulls his shoulder away. Dave’s hand buzzes from the lack of touch. 

“No. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I see dead people.” 

Klaus looks serious. Deadly serious. The kind of serious that, if Dave gave a single shit about winning this Hell war, he’d have to report to their OR. 

“I mean it, Klaus. I want to know what hurt you.” 

Klaus reaches up, and touches Dave’s hand. It serves as a reminder of the chill of Klaus’s flesh, the bullet wound that hides under the bandages which tickle their palm. Klaus looks at Dave, then, like he’s dissecting him. Like Dave is some lab-rat and Klaus is a mastermind. 

“You had a boy, right? You got caught, figured the army was a better bet than any social death you might experience in Ain’t-Shit-Minnesota?”

Hard to argue with. Dave gave Klaus flashes, glimpses of details of the whole story. On drunk nights, or stoned nights, or nights Dave felt it was impossible to live through without choking if he didn’t share what was caught in his throat. Klaus shared nothing in return, Dave realized. He drank it all in, graciously, but never offered a sip back. 

“I don’t know how that connects with you getting shot.”

Dave tries to hold himself steady, tries not to look at Klaus in the dimmed lantern of a dark Vietnam War tent. Tries to see Klaus as he is. As he truly is. 

“This is nothing, Dave. I’m asking you to drop it.”

Klaus doesn’t ask for much. Occasionally he’ll ask for harder, or more, or a longer night out on the town. Generally, though, Klaus doesn’t ask for things. He seems to border life in the way that mollusks do; asking for nothing but a rock to hold onto, if that. Dave grew up in the world of invasive zebra mollusks, and refused to see Klaus as something so demanding. Klaus demands nothing, not even a wanton boat to hold tight to. 

“Christ, Klaus. I don’t want to be a bastard, but you’re telling me you’ve been hurt worse than a Charlie shooting one hell of a chunk out of your back, and that chunk rotting to shit?” Klaus looks at him, bewildered. 

“So what if I am saying that?”

“So, well, that’s fucking horrible, I guess?” 

The words hang over them for a while. They stick to the hot, humid air that fills the space between them. Dave looks at Klaus and sees fear. He wavers. 

“It was horrible, yeah. I just don’t know why you care.” Klaus lights a cigarette and tries to avoid Dave’s eyes. 

“I care because I care about you.” It takes the air out of his lungs to say it. 

“Well that feels like your mistake” Klaus responds, before Dave has even finished speaking. 

“Why would you say that?’ Dave says. 

They sit in silence, for a bit, studying each other. Klaus lets a cigarette burn his fingers, and fizzle out. Dave watches as the light shifts from red hot to moon blue, to barely visible. He senses some water at the edge of Klaus’s eyes, but decides not to mention it. Occasionally, Dave’s dad would bring a walnut back from the grocery store. Dave would spend a week trying to open it before the shell would rot away. By the time the shell succumbed to nature, the nut inside had, too. Dave didn’t want that for Klaus. He had to find another way to crack him. 

“Just trust me,” Klaus said, barbed like a fence, “you don’t care.”

“I do, Klaus. I think it’s fucked up that you can see what I’ve risked and say that I don’t.”

Dave does care. He cares about Klaus more than he cares about breathing, some days. A hard bargain to make. 

Klaus falters. 

He looks Dave up, and down, in faded lantern light, and the absent glow of a new cigarette. Dave would do anything to pass whatever test he’s being subjected to. 

“It was bad” Klaus says. He lets it sit in the air, fizzle out. A simple statement. 

“I can tell” Dave says back, sitting closer to Klaus. 

“I don’t… It was bad. It was a lot of hurt. Stupid hurt. A graze is nothing.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to be. I’ve always let it happen.”

“I’m still sorry.”

Klaus buries, sideways, into Dave’s shoulder. 

“I am too. I wish I wasn’t like this.”

“I wish you were happy.”

After the stars shift, and the moon comes up, and Klaus buries further into Dave’s arm, Klaus speaks. Dave had to strain to hear it over the ambient chirping of the jungle and the gun-damage ringing through his ears, but he hears it none-the-less. 

“I am happy,” Klaus said, with a gentle burrow into Dave’s shoulder,” I’m happy with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> So. Dave, Huh?


End file.
